RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The stench from car­cass­es, slush and de­cay per­vad­ed the Wood­land com­mu­ni­ty on Wednes­day as flood­wa­ters slow­ly re­ced­ed. How­ev­er, re­lief was short-lived as dark clouds rolled in, threat­en­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fur­ther flood­ing.

Busi­ness­man Naresh Khem­raj said res­i­dents are in des­per­ate need of sand­bags, san­i­ta­tion and pipe-borne wa­ter to clean their flood­ed homes. He warned that a health haz­ard is loom­ing and asked why the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness had not despatched box­es of clean­ing sup­plies for res­i­dents who have not yet start­ed to count their loss­es.

“Peo­ple here need help. We need sand­bags. I used a half load of red sand which I had left­over in my yard to make my own sand­bags but what about the oth­er peo­ple who can­not go to get any for them­selves?” he asked.

Ramesh Mad­hai, who owns Mad­hai’s Su­per­mar­ket, was seen rid­ing on a trac­tor dis­trib­ut­ing boxed lunch­es and drink­ing wa­ter. He said he was an­gry that no help had been forth­com­ing.

“I’m not about pap­pyshow for the me­dia. Plen­ty of peo­ple want to go and talk on TV but they not bring­ing any help to peo­ple,” he said.

Di­anne Ali-Bo­cas, who lives near the New Cut Chan­nel, said she was grate­ful that Laing Con­trac­tors had fixed a breach on the riv­er bank.

“If they had not fixed it, we would have had five feet of wa­ter in­side this house,” Ali-Bo­cas said.

Apart from drowned live­stock, sev­er­al fam­i­lies evac­u­at­ed be­cause of an in­flux of snakes, caiman, bee­tles, mos­qui­toes and oth­er ver­min.

Han­iff Ali-Bo­cas said: “This morn­ing two caiman came up in my yard. Right now if you watch in the wa­ter, you will see how many dead bee­tles float­ing,” he said.

His neigh­bour found a big snake in­side the house and Ali-Bo­cas said once the floods sub­side, ex­ten­sive spray­ing will be need­ed to pre­vent an out­break of dis­ease.

At the Su­dama Teerath site where Laing Con­trac­tors did work pri­vate­ly to re­pair the breached riv­er bank of the New Cut Chan­nel, the new em­bank­ment held out overnight but many hous­es were va­cant as res­i­dents had evac­u­at­ed the day be­fore.

Pres­i­dent of the Wood­land Flood Ac­tion Group Adesh Singh said there was no dry ground for an­i­mals.

“Right now farm­ers are in dis­tress. We have re­ceived sev­er­al calls and they have no place for an­i­mals. They can­not put them on the road,” he ex­plained. “Our teams saw sheep on the bal­cony of a house and a herd of cows on an in­cline.”

For­mer coun­cil­lor Dood­nath Mayrhoo, who toured the area dis­trib­ut­ing lunch­es for a sec­ond day, called on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi to make funds avail­able to as­sist res­i­dents with clean­ing sup­plies, food and pipe-borne wa­ter.

“Why are they not here? Are they wait­ing for the flood wa­ters to go down and for peo­ple to clean and throw away their dam­aged ap­pli­ances be­fore they vis­it?” he asked.

Pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Group Ed­ward Mood­ie re­newed his call for the gov­ern­ment to fix the breach­es in the riv­er and for­ti­fy the em­bank­ment. Any­one want­i­ng to as­sist res­i­dents can con­tact SORFAG at 349-8548 or 334-5608.